The Claudia Hershey Mysteries - Box Set: Three Claudia Hershey Mysteries

by Laura Belgrave

  Detective, let him have just that little bit of dignity, please . . .

  Mrs. Becker’s parting words echoed in Claudia’s mind.

  Just that little bit of dignity.

  Strictly speaking, it wasn’t up to her. The circumstances mandated an autopsy. But canning the procedure . . . it could be done. No would one fight her.

  A car behind her beeped impatiently. Green again. Claudia glared into the rearview mirror, then moved her foot to the gas pedal and continued down the road. All right. She’d give it another day—two at the most. Barbara Kensington was expected to call Mrs. Becker any time now. Claudia had extracted a promise from the older woman to put her in touch the moment she heard from her. If she still hadn’t managed to personally talk to the caregiver by Friday morning, she’d think about arranging for Becker’s physician to sign off on the death certificate. Mrs. Becker had jotted down the doctor’s number for her. It wouldn’t take much more than a quick phone call to put things in motion. It was done all the time.

  Claudia wheeled into the police station parking lot and turned off the engine. She realized that Booey hadn’t shut up once and wasn’t shutting up now. Something about Becker’s train display in the garden.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Booey. You went into the garden?”

  “Oh, it was so unbelievable. Mr. Becker had nothing but G-scale trains. G-scale! It’s all set up near the pool and almost perfectly laid out. The tracks wind around some dwarf gardenia and fern—artillery fern, I think it’s called—and I’m pretty sure he used dwarf mondo grass, too. Blew me away, and that’s before I saw that he’d built trestle out of redwood! Had to be redwood. That’s like so—”

  “Wait a minute.” Claudia thumped the steering wheel. “Who the hell gave you permission to go into the garden?”

  Booey froze in place, one hand still gripping his seatbelt.

  “I asked you who gave you permission.”

  “I . . . no one.”

  “So you simply wandered the place as free as could be.”

  “No, not like that. I was looking for the kitchen.”

  “Obviously you didn’t find it in the garden.”

  “I, uh, I got . . . distracted.”

  Claudia leaned toward Booey so closely that if he’d been wearing glasses they would have fogged. “You listen to me,” she said. “You’re here because you want to be a cop, but you keep acting like a kid on vacation. Now either grow up or get out. Got that?”

  He nodded miserably, unable to meet her eyes. “I’m sorry.” Then he mumbled something so quietly that she had to ask him to repeat it. He did, but he still would not look at her. “My uncle, he said . . . he told me I needed to get some . . . balls. He said I . . .”

  His voice faded and Claudia shook her head. There was nothing to say to any of that. She hurtled out of the car and left Booey to think, act, play—whatever. She had work to do.

  Chapter 9

  The kitten didn’t own a corner of Claudia’s mind, not yet. In fact, though she would never confess it to Robin, she had forgotten about it altogether. She didn’t know what kind of person that made her, but hoped that if found out she might actually be forgiven when her forgetfulness was viewed in context of everything else she had to remember at the end of another miserable day. She especially hoped she might be forgiven when her failure to remember put her on a collision course with the kitten the moment she stepped through the front door. It was there. She was there. Both went on a sprawl, she harder than it, her arms pinwheeling and her briefcase skimming across the floor like a sled on packed snow.

  On her way down, she rapped her elbow on the edge of a bookcase. Tears shot to her eyes. She cursed and clamped a hand around her elbow while she found her feet and frantically scanned the floor. The kitten, the kitten . . . had she stepped on it? Did she crush it?

  Except for a preposterously long wooden hallway that led from the living room to the bedrooms, Claudia had never regarded the house as big. She did now. There were a thousand rooms to explore, a million dark corners to investigate and somewhere in one of them a kitten had to be hiding. She moved from room to room, turning on lights as she went and crooning gibberish in a voice intended to sound reassuring. She hoped the kitten’s silence meant only that it was frightened, not that it was dead or dying or incapable of sound because she’d crushed its throat with a shoe that must have appeared the size of Montana when it was coming down. She looked under beds and in open closets first. Then she looked in places she hadn’t thought of since she and Robin had moved in. She scored a missing earring, a quarter and two nickels, a button and a fountain pen that Dennis had given her and which she’d never used. She also unearthed enough dust bunnies to crochet an afghan, prompting a quick vow to vacuum over the weekend.

  The kitten was under one of the beds, after all—hers, no less. Claudia spotted it on her second sweep. It cowered against the wall at the headboard, right in the middle, and it wanted nothing to do with her. She couldn’t blame it, but she also couldn’t leave it there. The thing was trembling and as wide-eyed as the night she’d coaxed it from the backseat of her car. She didn’t think it was hurt, but she didn’t know for sure and she wouldn’t until she got it out. Claudia wished it had a name. If it had a name, maybe it would at least meet her halfway. It wasn’t responding to “kitty, kitty, kitty.”

  She leaned against the wall beside the bed. If she brought in a bowl of food and quietly thumbed through the case file right here, would the kitten come out? She thought about it, liking the idea that maybe—just maybe—her unobtrusive presence could be productive in two ways. Worth a shot.

  Ten minutes later she tiptoed back, unsteadily carrying the food bowl, her briefcase, a mug of steaming coffee, and a throw pillow to cushion her back against the wall. There wasn’t a lot of space between the bed and the dresser, but it would do. She set the bowl just outside the bed and as casually as possible removed folders and notepads from the briefcase.

  “It’s you and me, kitty.” She sighed, missing Robin. “Come on out. I won’t name you. I won’t step on you. I won’t even try to make you like me. Kitty? Kitty?”

  Nothing.

  Claudia gave it up and opened the Farr folder.

  * * *

  Despite their thoroughness, Moody and Carella’s efforts to learn anything from Farr and Raynor’s neighbors yielded no new insights. They hadn’t noticed any suspicious people in the area, nor had they heard any noises that might have signaled a disturbance around the time of the cat lady’s death. They did refute Raynor’s claims that he stayed away from Farr’s trailer, but Claudia hardly viewed that bit of news as a revelation. She knew Raynor was lying, and he probably knew that she did. That could mean two things. He freely lied because he had nothing to do with the woman’s death but found perverse pleasure in putting the police through hoops, or he lied because he had killed Farr and hoped not to be found out, or possibly even expected that he wouldn’t be.

  Of course, the unidentified fingerprints on the whisky glass remained a problem. Whoever else had touched that glass didn’t touch anything else in the trailer, or at least not that the crime scene technicians had found. If she presumed that the glass came from Raynor’s trailer, a buddy of his might’ve touched it there. Later, somehow, that glass wound up on the edge of a dead woman’s bathtub. Farr might’ve found it on the ground at some point, claimed it as her own, began using it. Could be. Their trailers weren’t close, but . . . could be. It could also be that she’d taken a liking to whiskey, had acquired some without a bottle, poured it into a glass she happened to find that happened to belong to Raynor, then took the first bath she’d had in a very long time, and along the way, happened to knock herself silly on the bathtub faucet and drowned as a result.

  Could be. Anything could be.

  For another twenty minutes Claudia sipped coffee and thumbed through the file, studying interview notes and official documents. She reread reports by social workers who stopped by Farr’s trailer to check on h
er. They didn’t come often. They didn’t stay long. One way or another, their reports said the same thing that Farr’s neighbors did: the woman had no friends, no visitors. And if she’d had service people in—a plumber, an electrician—Moody and Carella hadn’t been able to find them. Claudia stretched her legs and tried to shift to a more comfortable position. Everything she considered took her in loops that inevitably brought her back to Raynor. Even if it didn’t end with him, it began with him. His glass. His fingerprints. His lies.

  Claudia closed her eyes. She didn’t intend to drift off, but when she opened them again another half hour had passed. She knew she should get on her feet, eat dinner, make phone calls. Her legs had stiffened from being locked in place and she craved a cigarette. But the kitten had come out. The stupid thing slept on the open case file on top of her lap. She put a finger against his head and tentatively petted him, half expecting him to bolt. He didn’t. He purred instead, and so she petted him again, watching his little body rise and fall with every contented breath. She decided to stay put for a just a little longer, wryly acknowledging that the kitten had crossed some sort of threshold, morphing from an “it” to a “he” in the process.

  Damn.

  * * *

  Dennis Heath sounded glad to hear from her, but Claudia noticed that he didn’t exactly enthuse when he picked up the phone. There was none of that “Is this my favorite Hershey Kiss?”, a lover’s term she thought ridiculous, but that right now felt like a rabbit punch to the gut for its absence.

  She got right to the point. “I’ve been a thoughtless shit, Dennis. I’m sorry. I should’ve returned your calls.” She waited into the silence, one eye on the lemon-Dijon chicken breast she was frying, another on a pan of rice.

  “You sound like you’re calling from a tunnel,” he said at length.

  “I bought a cell phone. I’m trying it out.”

  “Ah.”

  “Dennis, look—”

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  People never meant that. Claudia flipped the chicken and said, “I’d like to, though. You probably thought I’d fallen off the edge of the earth.”

  He didn’t laugh.

  “It’s felt a little like that lately.”

  “Rough week on the job, huh?”

  It wasn’t exactly a sympathy vote, but at least it was an opening. Claudia rushed to fill it. She glossed over the work stuff and told him about Brian’s unexpected appearance, how he’d bought Robin the stereo she intended to buy, how he whisked her off to Washington, how he claimed he was a new man. She didn’t tell him how she’d allowed him into her bed.

  “I guess you just described the proverbial week from hell,” Dennis said when she was done. He paused. “I guess I would’ve wanted to crawl into a hole, too.”

  “But you wouldn’t have, Dennis. That’s the difference between us. I brood. You don’t. I’m a jerk. You’re not.”

  “I hope you’re not expecting me to debate you on the point,” he said, but his tone was lighter and they both laughed. “All right. You’re off the hook, Hershey. Now what are you doing that you can’t come over?”

  The chicken was done. The rice was overdone. Claudia salivated for them both, but . . . . “Can you give me ten minutes?” she said.

  “Given your recent history, how about I give you fifteen?”

  “You have an absurdly generous spirit. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Fifteen minutes. My eye’s on the clock.”

  “Done deal.”

  Claudia fumbled with the tiny cell phone buttons and disconnected the call. She dropped the phone into her purse, then looked longingly at the stove. Dennis liked her chicken, or claimed that he did. She shoveled the food into a casserole dish and headed for the door. She didn’t know if she was about to break a relationship or fix it. What she couldn’t do was pretend it didn’t need one or the other.

  * * *

  When the cell phone rang a mile from Dennis’s house, Claudia nearly ran off the road at the unexpected intrusion. She swerved to the shoulder and braked hard beside a row of cabbage palms, her heart quaking in her throat.

  Who the hell could be calling?

  She fumbled to retrieve the phone from her purse, simultaneously furious for buying it and dismayed to see that the sudden stop had turned her casserole dish into a projectile. The chicken and rice lay in a sodden mess in the well of the passenger side. All this, and no doubt for a misdial.

  The phone had a cheerful ring, which made Claudia hate it all the more while she stabbed at the “receive” button. “Yes,” she hissed. “Hershey.”

  “Lieutenant-it’s-Booey-and-I’m-in-trouble.”

  “What?”

  “Booey. It’s Booey. I’m in trouble.”

  “Booey? Either you’re whispering or I’m getting a weak signal on this phone because I can hardly hear you.”

  “It’s not the phone. I’m trying to keep my voice down.”

  Claudia thumped the phone with the heel of her hand. “Say again?”

  “I SAID I CAN’T TALK LOUD.”

  This time she made him out and felt a flutter of unease at his urgent tone. “Tell me what’s going on.” She pressed the phone tighter against her ear and used her free hand to block the other. “Try to speak up.”

  “I need help.”

  “Why? Where are you calling from, Booey?” She thought she heard rustling, and then his voice came back on: “I’m on my cell phone. I’m at Mr. Raynor’s, in a tree. There are dogs everywhere.”

  Chapter 10

  The dogs weren’t everywhere. They were in one spot, restlessly pawing at the base of the tree like wolves anticipating a kill. In the dark, with only her headlights for illumination, they looked even more fierce than before. And there were more of them. As Claudia drove slowly past Booey’s VW and approached them, she counted the shadowy figures. Seven. Seven that she could see.

  She shuddered. He’d made it back from Raynor’s trailer as far as the tree, something broad and so tall that its top blended with the dark. Another eight yards and he would’ve made it to his car.

  Giving the dogs wide berth, she inched by them. Her cell phone connection with Booey was still open and she could hear him breathing. She whispered a reassurance and told him she’d be back, then continued another twenty yards beyond, to Raynor’s trailer. To her surprise, the dogs did not follow. But then, why should they? Their prey was in a tree, visible and vulnerable. She was not.

  Raynor’s trailer was dark and quiet. If Booey was to be believed, it had been that way since he arrived thirty minutes earlier and foolishly decided to get out of his car and knock on the door. Claudia wondered why the dogs had not gone after him immediately, why they’d waited until he’d almost made it back to his vehicle. Training? Some kind of pack mentality? She gave a short laugh. Up until now, she’d thought her biggest challenge would be the kitten.

  What about Raynor’s truck? Was it parked behind the trailer? Claudia’s high beams pierced the gloom. She sought access through the trees, so densely nestled that it was hard to know where one stopped and another began. How did Raynor get through the wooded curtain? Or did he have another route that accessed the trailer from the back, bypassing the front altogether? She wished she’d paid more attention on her earlier visit. She maneuvered the car forty-five degrees, letting her headlights sweep the other end of the trailer. There appeared to be a gap between two trees that she might be able to navigate. But she didn’t like it, didn’t like not knowing what she might encounter on the other side, didn’t like knowing that she might have to back the car out to return. And of course, just as with the dark house, even if Raynor’s truck was gone, it didn’t mean he was. Too many unknowns. Not enough time.

  Claudia turned around and headed back to Booey’s tree, this time pulling close but driving slowly to avoid alarming the dogs. They edged away at her approach, but just barely, their mouths pulled back in snarls and their thick bodies rigid with deadly anticipation. She p
ut the car in park a foot away, but kept the engine running. Two or three of the dogs restlessly circled the Cavalier. The others resumed their post at the tree.

  She sat ramrod straight in the car, nervously drumming her fingers on the steering wheel and weighing options. She hadn’t called for backup, partly because Booey pleaded with her not to, terrified at his uncle’s reaction. But more than that, she feared an overreaction all around. With a boy in a tree, mean dogs on the ground and a man with a shotgun possibly lurking in the shadows, the prospect of calling in inexperienced officers who never saw real action seemed the larger threat. It didn’t take much to turn one tense moment into a blistering Waco.

  Claudia cracked her window a few inches. Except for the scuffling of their paws along the ground, the dogs made no sound—or almost no sound. Then, as her ears grew accustomed to the environment, she picked up on a low, throaty noise over the idle of the engine, a scratchy sound almost like static. It scared her more than anything.

  “How’re you doing, Booey?” she said into her phone, keeping her voice as low and even as possible.

  “All right, I think.” He feigned a laugh. “I’m a banquet for the bugs, though.”

  She wasn’t worried about the bugs. She was worried that his muscles would give out on him, that he would fall. Athletic he wasn’t, and he’d been clinging to tree branches going on forty minutes now. Why he was there—why he was on Raynor’s property at all—none of that mattered at the moment. She needed to get him down.

  “Listen, do me a favor, huh? Don’t scratch. Just hang in there a little longer while I figure this out.”

  “Okay . . . Lieutenant?”